India's chief economic adviser Raghuram Rajan to lecture at Yale

Raghuram Rajan, author of the award-winning book “Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy” and recently named chief economic adviser to the government of India, will give a free, public talk at Yale on Tuesday, Oct. 2.

Titled “Are Capitalism and Democracy Failing Us? The Challenges Facing the Post-Crisis Industrial World,” the talk will be held in Luce Hall auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Ave., at 4 p.m. The lecture will be streamed live online.

Rajan’s talk, the Coca-Cola World Fund at Yale Lecture, is sponsored by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale Law School, and the Yale School of Management.

In addition to his new advisory position in the Indian government, Rajan currently serves as the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and is a visiting professor for the World Bank, Federal Reserve Board, and Swedish Parliamentary Commission.

Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. His papers have been published in the top economics and finance journals, and he has served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Finance. “Fault Lines” won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award in 2010. With Luigi Zingales, Rajan also co-authored “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists.”

He formerly served as the president of the American Finance Association and was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Rajan’s previous work with the Indian government includes leading a committee on financial reforms and serving as honorary economic adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In 2010, he was featured on Foreign Policy magazine's list of top global thinkers. In a 2011 poll in The Economist, Rajan was ranked by his peers as the economist with "the most important ideas for a post-crisis world."

The Coca-Cola World Fund at Yale was established in 1992 to support intersecting endeavors among specialists in international relations, international law, and the management of international enterprises and organizations. Previous lecturers have included Michael Doyle, Senator Gary Hart, Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Senator Sam Nunn, Sadako Ogata, Samantha Power, and Mary Robinson.